Dec 24, 2012

Vietnam - State secrets revealed in Vietnam

One afternoon in mid-December, Colonel Tran Dang Thanh shared his views
on foreign affairs with an audience of deans and professors drawn from Hanoi's
many universities.

Like all Vietnamese Communist
Party business, Thanh's comments were considered state secrets. However,
unbeknownst to Thanh, who teaches at Vietnam's top military college, someone in
the audience was wired. A full text was soon uploaded to the Internet and went
viral.

The occasion was a meeting of
senior Party cadre who administer or teach at colleges and universities in the
capital area, and who double as functionaries charged with propaganda and
training. They had been convened to hear Thanh lecture on the situation in the
South China Sea.

China's relentless encroachments
on islets and sea areas claimed by Vietnam have been an intractable problem for
the regime. For several years now, the government has been the object of
trenchant online criticism for what bloggers regard as a limp response to
Chinese provocations.

Thanh's principal mission was to
explain why, in the view of Vietnam's leaders, a policy of restraint is the
nation's only rational course vis-เ-vis its huge
neighbor. Had he stuck to that theme, the recording might not have made much of
a splash. However, Thanh chose to embroider his two-hour talk with riffs on the
treachery of Americans, the admirable qualities of the North Korean and Iranian
regimes, the likely return of Russia to the region, and a lengthy, sometimes
impenetrable discussion of Vietnam's millennium-plus co-existence with the
resurgent giant to the north.

For critics of the Vietnamese
regime, the rambling remarks of this hitherto obscure professor epitomize
what's wrong with the nation's politics. It is not the foreign policy
discussion that has most energized the blogosphere, however.

Domestic attention has riveted on
a short passage near the beginning of Thanh's talk, when he noted that in his
first term as President of Russia, Vladimir Putin had banned Communist Party
activities and abolished the pensions of former Soviet Union officials. That
could also happen in Vietnam if the Party were to fall from power, Thanh
warned.

"Comrades now working don't
yet have a pension but sooner or later, we'll all be eligible for our
retirement pay, and we hope every one of us will draw it in full. I'm
explaining this so that each of you realizes that defending our nation and
socialist ideology covers a lot of things, and among these is the very
practical fact that we are protecting our own pensions and the pensions of
those who will come after us... So, I have to say clearly, we must do
everything we can to protect our socialist Vietnamese regime at all
costs."

Not once did Thanh bother to
mention the Party's familiar propaganda themes, snorted blogger Dong Phung
Viet. He said nothing about striving to create a nation that's "peaceful,
independent and socialist, just and democratic, sovereign and secure throughout
its entire territory."

For their part, resident
diplomats are doubtless poring over Thanh's tour of the world as viewed from
Hanoi. He singled out five nations for discussion: the United States, Russia,
Iran, North Korea and China. In summary, Thanh said:

On the United States: "To
tell the truth, the US is implementing a two-faced policy. One face uses
Vietnam as an advanced force to block China. The other face employs every means
to destroy the long-standing solidarity between the people of Vietnam and the
people of China. ... The Americans really want to set up a naval base at Cam
Ranh Bay, one of the three best harbors in the world. ... The Americans are
pushing a strategy of 'peaceful change' [of the Vietnamese regime] and they
seek to implement it through 'educational cooperation' with us."

On Russia:
"Resurgent, with an economy powered by endless reserves of oil and gas and
cutting edge defense industries, what does Russia want of us?... It is intent
on returning to East Asia. In the past, Russia gave strong support to our army
and navy. Now through us, they see a way back to the region. The Russians have
a high opinion of Vietnam. They see us as loyal and faithful. ... and like the
Americans, they really want us to rent Cam Ranh Bay to them. ... which of
course we're not going to do."

On Iran: "There are 1.1
billion Muslims between us and Europe. They are warrior peoples... who want to
remold the world according to Allah's plan. Now the Islamic Republic of Iran is
determined to pursue its nuclear development plan to secure a peaceful
environment. I won't go into whether Iran is building nuclear weapons or not...
but certainly the Iranians have enough strength to defend their interests."

On North Korea: "Its
people are economically poor, but overflowing with love of country, like us
Vietnamese in the 1960s and '70s. They're on a war footing. They launch rockets
... and get respect. Whatever the North Koreans say, they do. They're also
determined to become a nuclear nation. They cause the big countries to lose
sleep worrying about their rockets. That's something we need to study."

On China: (At this
point, Thanh launched into a 20-minute digression on Vietnam's long history of
cultural borrowing from China whilst fighting off invading armies every 200
years or so. Eventually he got to China's economic take-off under former leader
Deng Xiaoping and "Deng's burning desire", mastery of the South China
Sea.)

Defensive considerations and the
lure of vast supplies of oil and gas not far from home are driving China's
policy, Thanh said. That's made China the principal threat to Vietnam's claims
to its offshore waters and islands. But not, Thanh emphasized, the only threat.

Segueing into a discussion of
South China Sea issues, Thanh pounded away at the notion that war with China is
unthinkable, without ever quite saying so. There are 1.3 billion of them, and
only 90 million of us, he noted. Thus, for Vietnam, China must be a special
case. "We must never forget that they've invaded us over and over, yet we
also must always remember that China made great sacrifices to supply us in our
wars against France and the US. We must not seem ungrateful for that."

Thanh heaped scorn on the notion
that Vietnam could rely on American support. "They never have and never
will treat us well. If they're nice here, if they praise us there, support us
in the South China Sea, it's because they're trying to use a small fish to
catch a big one."

The first principal of Vietnam's
strategy therefore must be to safeguard its independence and
self-determination, Thanh asserted, stealing an oft-repeated line from
independence hero Ho Chi Minh. But it must also give top priority to preserving
a peaceful environment, he argued. This was not an easy task, indeed a
contradictory one, and the key to accomplishing it is preserving solidarity
between the people of Vietnam and the people of China.

Four things must be avoided,
Thanh declared: military confrontation, economic confrontation, isolation and
dependence on a foreign country.

Getting back the Paracel Islands
(from which China evicted South Vietnamese troops in 1974) will be difficult,
Thanh acknowledged, but we've got to try, going at it cleverly, avoiding a
direct clash. We told the Chinese, he said, that our historical claim to the
islands is better than yours. Let's fight it out in the International Court of
Justice. If it rules against us, we'll accept that.

Finally, Thanh double-underscored
the relevance of his presentation to the assembled dons. Illegal demonstrations
against Chinese aggression do not serve Vietnam's interest, he declared.
Enemies of Vietnam have been using the South China Sea problem to stir up
students. There have been too many demonstrations and they must stop now, he
argued.

"It's up to all of you
school leaders," Thanh said bluntly. "The Party expects you to manage
your kids. If we find that students from your school are taking part in
demonstrations, you can be sure there will be a black mark on your
record."

David Brown

http://www.atimes.com

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